A Collaborative Approach

Every year, 820,000 children around the globe die avoidable deaths because they are not getting the breastmilk they need to thrive.  In fact, only 2 in 5 infants under 6 months are being breastfed exclusively - as they should be.

Upswell worked with a powerful cohort of nutrition organizations from 16 countries to see if Facebook could help gain widespread support for breastfeeding.

goal

Research has shown that people trust their friends and family far more than they trust government and media information sources. Real people sharing their support for breastfeeding moms on Facebook could shift public opinion.

That’s why the cohort had one goal: increase the number of people who were receiving valuable breastfeeding content from friends and family.

impact

In less than one month, the cohort hit its goal and exceeded their wildest expectations:

• They increased the number of times people shared their posts by 1,069%

• Cohort members increased their reach on Facebook an average of 4,837%

• In turn, the cohort increased its viral reach by 1,498%

TACTICS

Learning from and supporting peers helped build lasting improvement on social media. Each organization shared insights and content with each other in a private Facebook Group. Together, they learned what content people would be shared the most on Facebook.

The cohort also spoke with a newly unified voice and messaging -- building a content library that organizations could access. They posted them on their own pages with great success.